It was Christmas Eve many years ago. My family and I were sitting around a lovely dinner table in Annapolis discussing our most disappointing Christmases ever. My mother recounted her story of when she was a little girl and how tragically disappointed she was to wake up one Christmas morning only to find there was not a pony in her back yard as she expected. Santa had apparently let her down that year and given the pony to someone else. Try as I might, I couldn’t recall a time when I was disappointed; all my Christmases have been relatively happy ones spent with family. My brother, on the other hand,…